A year and a half after rejecting plans to establish a youth curfew, the Fayetteville City Council has voted to move forward with a proposal to restrict unattended minors in the city after dark.
The ordinance will be drafted by city staff and brought before the council at their next meeting on May 12. Before the curfew can take effect, the majority of city council needs to vote in favor of the ordinance at the upcoming meeting. The curfew will be modeled largely after Charlotte’s youth curfew ordinance, according to a preliminary proposal put forward by Council Member Derrick Thompson and approved by the majority of the city council. The curfew would be evaluated after a one-year pilot period.
“We need to take back our streets,” Thompson said.
The curfew was decided on at a special meeting of the Fayetteville City Council on Monday to discuss strategies to reduce gun violence, with a youth curfew among several recommendations proposed by Mayor Mitch Colvin. The council chamber was packed for the meeting, with notable guests including state Sen. Val Applewhite and former Fayetteville Police Chief Kemberle Braden.
Monday’s special meeting was called by the mayor after several high-visibility gun violence incidents across the city in recent weeks. On March 22, a 12-year-old girl was shot and sustained life-threatening injuries at a carnival in west Fayetteville. On April 13, a 22-year-old man was shot and killed at the College Lake Recreational Center in Fayetteville.
At the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival on April 26, attendees were shocked as they heard gunfire nearby and were swiftly evacuated by police, who discovered a car just yards from the festival grounds with gunshots through it. On Sunday morning, police responded to gunfire at a condominium complex in west Fayetteville. A 36-year-old man with multiple gunshot wounds was found at the scene and transported to the hospital but died from his injuries shortly after. No suspects or arrests have been announced.
After nearly three hours of discussion at Monday’s meeting, the council voted 8-2 in favor of enacting a “youth protection ordinance.” Council Member Mario Benavente and Council Member Deno Hondros voted against the curfew, citing concerns about its enforcement, effectiveness and potential harm it could cause youth who enter into the criminal justice system because of the curfew. Police have not identified youth perpetrators in any of the recent Fayetteville homicides, Benavente said. Of the 14 homicides that occurred in the first three months of the year, only one juvenile was arrested for murder or attempted murder, according to the first quarter report of the Fayetteville Police Department.
“A curfew would not have stopped any single one of the horrible things that y’all mentioned,” Benavente said in regard to the recent incidents that were discussed at the meeting. “Not a single one. And if that is not recognized, then you guys are proving that it doesn’t really matter the efficacy of the program.”
The council did not settle on many details about what the law would look like in Fayetteville, such as penalties for breaking curfew for parents and children.
Council Member Malik Davis, who was not yet elected when the last vote on the curfew was held in September 2023, said he had only recently come around to the idea. Davis said he changed his mind when he learned his close friend’s granddaughter was the girl shot at the carnival in March.
“And so when I got the phone call, it hit home,” Davis said at the meeting. “It hit differently because I have nieces, I have nephews and I have cousins who are teens. And so if you would have asked me a month ago I would have told you no. But as of today, I don’t think this is a top notch thing that we could do, but it’s a tool.”
Few attendees of the meeting expressed strong support for the curfew when talking to reporters and among themselves afterwards. Many residents leaving the meeting expressed ambiguity or said they had reservations about the curfew. Some expressed confusion over what had taken place over the past three hours, as council members had repeatedly amended their motions during the meeting and bickered among themselves.
Tony Brown, a prominent organizer of youth engagement programs in the city who runs multiple nonprofits geared toward at-risk adolescents, expressed mixed feelings about the curfew. He said most of the time youth engage in crimes in the after-school hours, when they are congregating in large groups and don’t have anywhere to go, not late at night. He said the curfew could help by getting youth safely home after engaging in beneficial afterschool activities, but emphasized the importance of addressing the root causes of juvenile crime.
“The most issues they will have is lack of love,” Brown told CityView, referring to at-risk youth. “Their parents are not involved or they’re going through financial stuff, or they’re just looking for something to eat. Usually at that time they’re not afraid of anything in here [city hall], from the police or any consequences.”
Speaking to CityView after the meeting, Interim Police Chief Todd Joyce did not answer directly if he believed the ordinance would lower the rate of homicides or offer his personal views on the ordinance. He emphasized the importance of community partners that work with underserved youth.
“As this goes into place, we will work through all those pieces to make sure that we are in compliance,” Joyce told CityView. “Some of the things that were referenced this evening truly is about those community partners. And there were several people who are in the room today who we work with on a regular basis. I think it’s equally important of how they play a part in this as we continue to work with them to give our youth other options. Also working with the court counselors through juvenile justice, other things that could be in place that may not be punitive for juveniles.
“But again, as we work, I know this is fresh tonight, we will follow the directives of council as we work through the initial stages of it and I know we’ll probably be reporting some of that as we get through the next quarter.”
The council also voted on two other crime-fighting measures at the special meeting.
- To provide an additional $3,000 to the highest-award tip solicitations from Crimestoppers, the nonprofit that gives anonymous tipsters cash for information on crimes if the tip leads to an arrest. The organization currently offers $2,000 prizes, so the rewards will now be $5,000 with the city’s contributions.
- To enact a policy that requires only clear bags to be allowed into large events held on city-owned property. Additionally, masks that are not surgical or medical masks would be banned from such events (this is already state law).
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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